Okay, I linked to this yesterday, but I didn’t realize how cool it was going to be until I had the update installed. If you’re using a Mac, run Software Update (go to the Apple Menu if it hasn’t popped up already), then hold control and use your scroll wheel (or use two-finger scrolling if you’re using a MacBook or MacBook Pro).
30 September 2006
29 September 2006
Daring Fireball: New in 10.4.8: Zoom Using Scroll Wheel
Daring Fireball: New in 10.4.8: Zoom Using Scroll Wheel
Cool new feature. (You could do this via the keyboard before, now you can use the mouse.) Very useful for blowing up small YouTube movies.
New Google Reader
Google has released a new version of Google Reader that’s worth checking out. It sports an interface that should be easy to get a hang of if you’re already used to Gmail. Interestingly, Google makes no mention of RSS anywhere on their site, even though the job of Google Reader is to let you read RSS feeds. This isn’t a bad call on their part. RSS is a tricky technology to explain to non-techies, and “Your inbox for the web” is a nice analogy.
My number one RSS reader of choice remains NetNewsWire, but my need to be able to read feeds on any of few computers makes it inconvenient. I had been using NewsGator Online, which provided very nice syncing with NetNewsWire, but I hate the interface, I don’t like the typography of the feed text, and all the buttons below each entry are too busy. (Also, let me mention how much I don’t like FeedBurner’s FeedFlare feature that seems to be gaining popularity. If I wanted to email your entry, I’d copy and paste it into my email program. I don’t need a button to do that, and having all those links at the bottom of every entry makes everything too busy.)
Google Reader looks nice and presents all the text with the same clean look as the rest of Google’s growing suite of applications.
My new, revised recommendation for people who want to start reading RSS feeds:
- For Mac users who are only going to subscribe to a few sites: Safari’s built in RSS reader is great.
- For everyone else: Google Reader.
- For Mac users who are going to subscribe to more than 20 or so sites, and who don’t have a need to be able to read their feeds on multiple computers: NetNewsWire.
28 September 2006
Official Google Reader Blog: Something looks... different.
Official Google Reader Blog: Something looks… different.
Google launches new version of their RSS reader. Funny, I had just decided today to play around with Google Reader for a little bit.
On Apple's cease-and-desist letters
On Apple’s cease-and-desist letters
Short Daring Fireball post about the real reason for Apple’s “podcast” nastygram. (They don’t want to stop the word “podcast”, just stop people from trying to trademark it.)
They're not fonts!
On the difference between “font” and “typeface”. (You probably mean typeface whenever you say font.)
27 September 2006
Iwata Asks
Nintendo is running a very nicely done series of interviews between Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo, and the developers of the Wii. Each piece is long enough to cover information you probably didn’t already know and gives a nice look at the thought behind designing the device. So far they’ve covered the Wii hardware, the controller, and the software web channels.
The sense I get reading it is how proud the developers are of what they came up with. Wii is a huge risk for Nintendo, in departing so much from the status quo of console design. At one point in the interview they’re discussing what it was like when people actually started being able to demo the thing:
Ikeda: […] I was very moved by Nintendo’s Media Briefing. It started with Mr Miyamoto getting up on stage and using the controller to conduct a virtual orchestra, and it finished with Mr Iwata playing Tennis from Wii Sports. By the time it finished I was close to tears. (laughs) I’m a little embarassed to say this in front of you guys, but I was overflowing with emotion. And even after that, I thought I was going to cry again when I saw how much everyone enjoyed using the controller. (laughs)
Ashida: I spent all of E3 at Nintendo’s exhibition corner, and I’ve never witnessed at previous E3s anything like the excitement I saw there at the Nintendo booth.
Iwata: We had that glass case with lots of controllers lined up, didn’t we? The people crowding around there, it was a truly unforgettable sight.
Ashida: There were so many of them! Sure, there have been displays like that in the past, but the atmosphere… it was the first time I’d ever experienced anything like that.
Iwata: There was a great air of excitement, wasn’t there? Their eyes were glued to the case!
Ashida: It was absolutely incredible. Everyone looked so thrilled, including the staff from Nintendo of America. And the smiles on the faces of everyone who got to play the games.
Iwata: That’s what I remember the most. I actually found myself wondering “why are they smiling so much?” as if I didn’t know what they were doing. I wondered what was happening.
Go read: Iwata Asks.
Battlestar Galactica: The Story So Far
Battlestar Galactica: The Story So Far
Recap of the first two seasons of Battlestar Galactica, free from iTunes. (Link opens iTunes.)
26 September 2006
The Sausage Factory and the Sausage Fest
The Sausage Factory and the Sausage Fest
What happens when someone uploads explicit photos to Wikipedia that are relevant to the explicit topics being covered? (Warning: NSFW. Seriously. Explicit photos.)
Anatomy
Wedding planning is a frustrating experience. No, I’m not referring to making lots of phone calls or fretting about making the wrong decisions about music. I’m talking about all the bad jokes. Being a guy, you have to put up with a lot of crap. Everyone assumes you’ve done nothing other than pick a color for your vest and try some cake. Everyone makes terrible, terrible jokes about how you should get used to saying, “yes dear.”
I don’t hold Adam Corolla and Jimmy Kimmel in high esteem, but something they said a few years ago has stuck with me. They were talking about how they were sick of how men are portrayed. Think of a sitcom or a TV commercial where the wife has to go away, and the man either tries to make dinner and ruins it, or immediately goes to get take-out. In the process he probably also burns a hole in a shirt trying to iron it, and more than likely uses something inappropriate to feed or clothe a baby. Men aren’t given much credit, and never have been. I’m okay with that. I have a degree in Cultural Studies, for that matter, and I understand why our culture loves these terrible jokes and makes these hilarious assumptions about our incompetence. We have their place, and we say things out of our station, everyone assumes we don’t know what we’re talking about.
Which brings me to Grey’s Anatomy. It’s not as good as you think it is. It’s not a bad show, it’s just not great. I’ve been saying this since the bomb in the body cavity episode and, whenever I deign to express the notion that the show isn’t the greatest acheivement in broadcasting since the FM band, I get the exact same response: you obviously just don’t get it. A few years ago I made similar statements about Sex in the City to similar disgust from lots of people. If I say something bad about the show, it must be because I’m a guy and I don’t get it. It’s not possible for someone to just think the show isn’t all that great. Either you love it, or you don’t get it.
I have to give people credit, this is an excellent form of argument. “If you understand the show, then you think it’s great. Clearly you don’t understand it, therefore you don’t think it’s great.” It’s impossible for me to demonstrate that I in fact do understand the show, because by their modus ponens anyone who did would love it. I can say that I’ve seen every episode (I have), that I’ve seen enough other TV to compare it to (I have), and I’ve studied enough narrative art to understand the form (I have), but still, if you’ve decided that I don’t get the show, I can’t demonstrate to you that I do.
There’s an episode of The Simpsons called A Millhouse Divided (bless Wikipedia for having individual entries on Simpsons episodes). In it, Millhouse’s parents gets a divorce, and his dad loses his job at the cracker factory. His boss says:
Kirk, crackers are a family food. Happy families. Maybe single people eat crackers; we don’t know. Frankly, we don’t want to know. It’s a market we can do without.
This is how television works. Maybe black people watch television; we don’t know. Maybe gay people watch television; we don’t know. Maybe women watch television; we don’t know. Being a white male aged 18-35 there are plenty of programs for me to watch. So many, to borrow a phrase, I have to pay a robot to watch them for me. Suddently Grey’s Anatomy appears on primetime television and it has strong female characters and everyone treats it like it’s the greatest thing on the air. How could a show that features strong female characters not be a great show?
I don’t dispute that people love it. It even beat CSI in the ratings for its season premier. It’s a hugely popular show, and it deserves its popularity. It’s not a bad show, I just don’t think it’s the great show everyone says it is.
Anyway, to get to the point:
- Guys can have opinions about “girl stuff”. I hate having my views dismissed out of hand just because I’m a guy. Consider that it’s actually possible for me to both know what I’m talking about and disagree with you.
- It’s sad that there are only a few shows on that feature strong female characters. (Watch this video of Joss Whedon talking about that. Go ahead, I’ll wait.) I submit that just because a show does have strong female characters does not automatically make it hall of fame material. A show can have good characters and still not be a great show, and a show can be a great show and have no women in it. The rare show that does both is worthy of praise.
In conclusion, Meredith is a terrible lead character who’s never given me any reason to care about her high school level crush. That finale that you thought was so great would have been an excellent one-hour piece, but stretching it over two nights meant 30-45 minutes of downtime including a horrid “I’m Spartacus” routine that ruined the momentum between Izzy deciding to worsen Denny’s condition, him getting the heart, and him dying, which was the central story. And Carrie and Samantha et al’s banter never felt natural and none of those actresses has any comedic timing.
24 September 2006
OpenID Server
Very cool: OpenID Server for Movable Type. Just drop it in your Movable Type plugins directory, add one line to your main page’s header, and you can log into any OpenID-enabled site using your own identity, if you don’t have or want to use a TypeKey, LiveJournal, or Vox account.
I’m now accepting comment logins using OpenID, so if you are running your own OpenID server, or have a Vox or LiveJournal account, you can use those identities when you comment (or keep using TypeKey). If you’re already logged in at Vox or LJ, just type in username.vox.com or username.livejournal.com, and the backend will check with that site to make sure you are who you say you are without any need to enter a password.
22 September 2006
iColours.ca - Customize Your Laptop!
iColours.ca - Customize Your Laptop!
Instructions on how to modify the look of the white Apple on your Apple laptop.
21 September 2006
Link Only Right-Handed on Wii
Wow, this is strange. Twilight Princess was designed with Link being properly left-handed. Late in the development cycle, they realized that they wanted to make him right-handed to accomodate the poor righties who couldn’t possibly be expected to hold the remote in their left hands, so they mirrored the entire game. If you buy the GameCube version, Link’s a lefty. If you buy the Wii version, he’s a righty, and the entire game is flipped. Right turns are left turns. The map is backwards. Says Shigeru Miyamoto:
Although Link is left-handed, at E3 we noticed people seemed to be using the right Wii controller to swing his sword. That’s why we decided to make Link right-handed. The interesting thing is, on the GameCube Link is still left-handed; because of the mirror mode the game map is reversed.
This almost makes me want to just buy the GameCube version instead, since the Wii is backwards compatible.
Users want video downloads on the TV
Users want video downloads on the TV
Ars Technica reports on a study by Accenture.
The Office, Around the World
Great piece on how four different versions of The Office all reflect their own countries, even while being basically the same show.
20 September 2006
Civil War Room 4: Mark Millar & Tom Brevoort Talk #4
Civil War Room 4: Mark Millar & Tom Brevoort Talk #4
Spoilers included at no extra charge.
Super Priest Can Turn Anything Into Body, Blood Of Christ | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
Super Priest Can Turn Anything Into Body, Blood Of Christ | The Onion - America’s Finest News Source
When preparing for a Catholic wedding, one tends to find extra joy in Catholic humor.
Link, Left-Handed Hero No More
Outrage! So I’m, to say the least, excited about the Wii, and there’s little chance I won’t be playing The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess as soon as I can. However, I read something today that upset me verily.
Quick quiz: in the Legend of Zelda games, is Link left-handed or right-handed?
That’s correct, Link is one of the few characters in video games who’s left-handed. I of course noticed this at a very young age playing the original The Legend of Zelda for the NES.
Some screenshot proof:
The Wikipedia entry on Link presently (2006-09-20) contains the following passage regarding Link’s handedness:
Link is left-handed, although this detail is never particularly stressed in any of the games, save for a Nintendo Gallery figurine description in The Wind Waker, which states that Link favors his left hand, and the Adventure of Link instruction booklet, which describes Link setting off “with a magical sword in his left hand and a magical shield in his right.” He wields his blade accordingly in the 3D games. In the original NES and Super NES Legend of Zelda titles, Link can be seen alternately holding his weapon in the right or the left hand, depending on his orientation, due to sprite mirroring (Nintendo’s originally joking explanation for this is that he always keeps his shield pointed at Death Mountain, which in the 2D games that featured it was always North, towards the top of the screen). Starting with The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, however, the sprites are no longer mirrored and have been updated to reflect that Link holds his sword in his left hand and his shield in his right, no matter what direction he is facing. This occurs in the left and right-looking sprites. In The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, however, Link returns to alternately holding his weapon in the right or the left hand, depending on his orientation. At the beginning of the Four Swords Plus (Four Swords Adventures) manga, Link is referred to as the “left-handed hero” after defeating pirates that were raiding a Hylian town. However, in the animated TV series, Link is right-handed.
So there you have it. Aside from ocasional discrepancies and technical issues, Link has always been a left-handed character.
Today I read this article about the Wii, which contained some disturbing news:
In New York, Nintendo showed only an E3 level of Twilight Princess, refit with updated Wii controls. Shaking the remote-shaped controller in the right hand causes hero Link to swing the sword he holds in his right hand. Shaking the nunchuck controller in the player’s left caused Link to attack with the shield in his left. Those details might hasten the heartbeat of true “Zelda” fans who remember Link being a lefty ever since his 1987 original outing on the Nintendo Entertainment System. Link’s switched sword hands for this Wii version, though Nintendo Head of Localization Bill Trinen pointed out to GameFile that even the original Link sometimes held his sword in his right: When he ran to the right, since the primitive NES simply flipped the drawing it used for Link running to the left, a southpaw grip of his sword mirrored as a clutch in his right.
Here’ a photo from the upcoming game:
So it seems that in the upcoming Twilight Princess for the Wii, Link will be right-handed. Players will be able to wave the Wii controller around and have Link mirror their movements. Apparently so that all you weak righties don’t have to hold the controller in your off-hands, Nintendo has decided to change this important aspect of Link’s character, and destroy one of the few great icons in the left-handed world.
Lefties have to live every single day dealing with things that are designed for right hands, and now we’re losing Link. I am outraged.
The Lost Experience
The Lost Experience, the alternate reality game that ran this summer, has finally finished, and the secrets of Hurley’s numbers on Lost have been revealed.
[Spoilers…]
Fans of ABC’s hit SF series Lost who played this summer’s alternate-reality game The Lost Experience got a big payoff if they stuck with it: the secret to Hurley’s numbers (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42) and revelations about the Dharma Initiative and the Hanso Foundation. The answers, which were reported by TV Guide, can be found in a video detailing the elaborate backstory to the show, which has been posted in its entirety on YouTube.com.
The numbers represent the Valenzetti Equation, a mathematical formula having to do with the timetable for humanity’s extinction. The show’s sinister Dharma Initiative was an effort by the mysterious Hanso Foundation to ward off that inevitability. When Dharma failed, Hanso’s nefarious acting leader, Thomas Mittelwerk, set in motion a plan to release a virus that would kill 30 percent of the world’s population.
More information can be found by poking around Wikipedia’s entry on The Lost Experience.
19 September 2006
moo | we love to print
Looks like a very cool service that will pull your photos from Flickr and print them onto the back of business cards.
18 September 2006
17 September 2006
Mighty Mouse Scroll Ball
Quick tip: the scroll ball on my Mighty Mouse started going a little wonky. I found that turning it upside down and rubbing it on a soft cloth (I used an eyeglass cleaning silk cloth) for a minute will clean out all the debris and it works like new now.
15 September 2006
Ethan Van Sciver on Green Lantern
Newsarama just published [a long interview with artist Ethan Van Scriver][1], who drew Green Lantern: Rebirth last year. The interview’s pretty long, but here’s the exciting part, where he talks about Green Lantern:
NRAMA: You did some DC work with books like Impulse and Flash: Iron Heights, as well as a few gigs at Marvel, including New X-Men with Grant Morrison. At what point did you feel like you had really made it as a comic book artist?
EVS: That still hasn’t really… well, maybe that happened recently with Rebirth, but up until then, I always felt like a very small fish in a big pond. I still do feel like that. I feel like I’ve been very, very lucky. But I still don’t feel like I’ve made it. I haven’t achieved everything that I wanted to achieve yet. And I’m still very much in awe of my peers. So I’ve got a little ways to go yet.
NRAMA: What is your favorite thing you’ve done? Is it Rebirth?
EVS: Yeah, I think so. So far. It’s something that I can read over and over again and still enjoy. You know, most of the work that I’ve done is hard for me to look at now, with some time gone by. But Rebirth is really just good. It’s a fun read. I recommend it.
NRAMA: What’s your favorite issue?
EVS: Of Rebirth?
NRAMA: Well, your favorite issue of anything you’ve done.
EVS: I would say the first issue of Rebirth is my favorite, because I think it’s Geoff’s writing at his best. Geoff tells me he thinks the fourth issue is the best because there’s so much cool stuff going on. And there is. I mean, there’s Green Arrow with the Green Lantern ring, there’s Hal rising up out of his coffin, there’s all this great stuff. But Issue #1, I think, is the best thing he’s ever written because it just hooks you right away. It’s so full of mystery, and so strange. And you just feel a rainy breeze, like something’s happening, something’s coming — it’s on the wind.
NRAMA: And you created Parallax for that. It must have been really fun to come up with the design for that freaky looking thing.
EVS: Parallax — Geoff just said he’s this ancient fear entity. Obviously, if he is fear, he’s older than anything. I think Geoff just described him as a big, huge monster. I guess I thought primitive, and I was thinking, let’s mix insects and dinosaurs and try to maintain some of the design for the Parallax costume — try to incorporate that into his biology. And I ended up with that thing, which was good enough.
NRAMA: Do you think you’ll be drawing Parallax again?
EVS: That’s a loaded question, isn’t it?
NRAMA: Well, if someone was trying to find out if you’re doing a project with a lot of yellow rings in it, then yeah, I guess it’s fairly loaded.
EVS: Chances are, I will be drawing Parallax again, yeah.
NRAMA: Besides Parallax, another thing you added to the Green Lantern mythos is the ring signature.
EVS: Yeah. All the little glowing effects and things are a new addition to the Green Lanterns and the way they look now. You know, it started with Geoff because he initially said he thought it would be great if each one of the individual Lanterns had their own sort of beam that came out of their ring.
NRAMA: And didn’t he describe that in the narrative of Rebirth? There was a scene where Kyle and John and Hal were working together to take down Parallax, but each was doing it with a different style. John’s had the look of an architect, Kyle’s an artist, and then Hal with his straightforward fearlessness. Geoff actually spelled out why they looked that way and your art illustrated it.
EVS: Yeah! Yeah! It was amazing! He had it all worked out. And as soon as he just described it to me — I think what he originally said was that John’s ring would make a rigid, kind of squared beam, constructed.
NRAMA: Because as an architect, he would use rulers and straight edges.
EVS: Right. And from there, I remember we had these conversations where I would say, “Dude! John should be covered by this architectural bitmap wherever he goes.” I mean, the way he thinks and the way he solves problems in his work — he should actually wear that on his sleeve, literally. It should be all over him. And let’s do the same with everybody else. They’re all so unique and individual. And so I started to kind of flirt with it in the first issue of Rebirth, where I would give John these sort of light, architectural lines. And by the fourth issue, it was just, “Let’s play with this. Let’s go full force.”
NRAMA: They wear it now like part of their costume.
EVS: Well, from there, something happened where, you know, Geoff and I were talking about how the Green Lantern costumes are made of energy, instead of fabric or spandex. I think they’ve always been made of energy. I think everyone’s always agreed with that. And yet, people always draw them so that they look like spandex. It annoys me, because it seems like a lie. It seems like something an artist could fix very easily, and nobody has really done it, because we have this certain idea of what a superhero looks like. And so, I said the first thing that needs to go are the highlights in the black part of Green Lantern’s costume. It shouldn’t have those gray highlights anymore.
NRAMA: Because it’s energy?
EVS: Because if it’s energy, and if it’s black energy, it’s the absence of light. It should not be able to reflect light back. They should always be a black silhouette. And then I did a couple of sketches and showed them to Geoff, and Geoff liked them.
And then I thought, that symbol on their chest should be kind of like, since they’re this intergalactic police force, those are the badges. They should also perhaps work like sirens, so that they can jump off a Green Lantern’s chest and be three-dimensional like a hologram, and be seen from any angle and by any alien that’s around so they know what they’re dealing with. They’re about to deal with the Green Lanterns. And maybe it would flash and make noise when the Green Lanterns were racing to the scene. And it just opened up this whole new look, this whole new way of thinking about the Green Lanterns visually. And it’s way different. I mean, it’s different than what people have seen in the past. I think it helped to propel the book to a new audience.
NRAMA: Because it was so unique looking…
EVS: It just suddenly seemed so fresh. And the more you think about that, the more excited you can get about working on a Green Lantern book. The possibilities don’t just lie within, you know, “My ring can make anything. It can make a herd of green elephants.” A herd of green elephants? That’s actually boring. You know, there’s not a whole lot that you can do with that at the end of the day — it’s still just a green elephant. When you really think of the idea that these guys are an intergalactic police force and they’re just full of energy and individuality, and they abide by this code, this oath. I get goosebumps. I get excited about it. It’s so fun.
NRAMA: You’ve got it bad for these Green Lanterns, Ethan.
EVS: I’ve never been so motivated by any comic book property before. I really haven’t.
I have to say, I hated the thing where the lantern logos shoot out of their chests now, until I read his explanation of it.
14 September 2006
IGN: US Wii Price, Launch Date Revealed
IGN: US Wii Price, Launch Date Revealed
$250, available November 19, Wii Sports included along with one controller and nunchuck.
13 September 2006
Lolita
According to the entry on Lolita in Stanley Kubrick’s Wikipedia page, the difficulty of making Vladimir Nabokov’s book into a movie were so notorious by the time of its release that its posters bore the mocking tagline of, How did they ever make a movie of Lolita? The answer is, sadly, they compromised. Lolita the book is a bizarre, perverted tale of a man and his love for a 12-year old girl. To appease censors, Kubrick raised the titular character’s age to 14 and removed almost all the erroticism from the text. The events in the film are wonderfully depicted in true Kubrick form (and, in true Kubrick form, they go on for about 45 minutes too long), but the point of Lolita was never its plot, but the manner in which Nabokov told the tale. Without the disgustingly-appealing look into Humbert Humbert’s mind, the movie just doesn’t feel right, even with great performances from James Mason and Peter Sellers. It’s odd, too, how much a different the two years between 12 and 14 make for Sue Lyon, the actress playing Lolita. At 12, a relationship between a grown man falls soundly in the unacceptable realm of pedophilia. At 14, there’s enough of a hint of adult consent that, while still inarguably creepy, the relationship doesn’t offend the same deep, base sensabilities necessary to at once loathe and understand Humbert’s character.
According to Wikipedia, Kubrick himself commented that, had he realized how severe the censorship limitations were going to be, he probably never would have made the film. It’s a fascinating look into what a brilliant director did with the tools he had available, considering the source he was trying to adapt, but that doesn’t all add up to make the movie anything as fine as the novel.
How To: Back up your music using iTunes 7
How To: Back up your music using iTunes 7
New version adds a nice backup feature.
12 September 2006
The iTunes Icon Timeline
I love that they changed the color of the icon with iTunes 7. They used to do it every version. Here’s the history.
A Few Thoughts on iTV
Apple, in a rare pre-announcement of a product, said today that they’re working on a little box that lets you stream video, photos, and music from your networked computers to your TV. This is not a DVR. It doesn’t record TV, because that’s not how Apple sees the future of media working. Broadcast media doesn’t fit into their model.
Think about how you use a TiVo. You go through a menu, pick a show you want to watch, and watch it. Pretty simple.
Now think about how a TiVo works. It has a set schedule. When a show you like comes on, it switches to the right channel, sits there for the appropriate amount of time recording the show, then switches to the next show on its schedule.
The user interface of TiVo makes it seem like shows are discrete files that your TiVo has access to, but you’re really just watching slices of time from earlier in the week. This becomes jarringly apparent when a TV show flashes a weather advisory for a storm from last Tuesday, or when you sit down to watch a program only to discover that the cable went out while it was being recorded, or when a football game ran over time. You’re not actually watching TV shows. You’re watching what TiVo was watching while the show was supposed to be on. TiVo is a very well-designed halfway point between broadcast television and à la cart television. It turns broadcast into à la cart, but it’s still a recording of the broadcast.
Apple’s model is entirely à la cart. It has strongly defended this model against the desires of the suits in the record industry for years now. You buy a song at a certain price, and you own that song. Now, with TV and movies, they’re doing the same thing. The reason that the iTV doesn’t have a TV-in port is that Apple doesn’t care about broadcast TV (and, well, they don’t get any money for broadcast TV, only when you buy shows from them). The Apple model is that you’ll pay them to subscribe to a TV show, and they’ll give you the download whenever a new show is up (think paid podcasts). The iTV is a box that lets you watch it all as if it were normal TV. In other words, it’s a TiVo without the clunky need to record the show on a channel first.
There are some problems with this. First and foremost, there’s no capability to watch live TV. As an assimilated TiVo user, I rarely watch live TV, but having it there is very, very important for coverage of live events (and sports, if I cared), weather reports, disasters, and breaking news. Second, Apple doesn’t offer the season pass option on all of its iTunes shows. And even if it did, the present model requires pre-paying for a season of a show, which means that if I were to buy all my shows from iTunes, I’d be shelling out a very large sum of money all at once in September when all the new seasons debut. I’d prefer a discounted weekly bill to a pre-pay model.
So what is the iTV (or what will it be when it comes out)? It’s the hunk of plastic that actually makes all of Apple’s work in the digital media field useful. It’s great that I can download movies to my computer, but when they’re stuck on my computer, what good do they do me? Being able to watch them on my TV means that they’re actually something I’d watch at all.
I’ve written before of what I think the future of media is going to look like, and with iTV it’s pretty apparent what Apple thinks it will be. You won’t subscribe to broadcast TV and you won’t buy DVDs or CDs. Everything will be on your computer, but you’ll be able to watch it on your TV, on another computer, or on your iPod. Plus, you’ll own it, so if you want to go back and watch a re-run of a TV show, you’ll just pull it up from a menu.
Battlestar Galactica Ad
I just saw an ad for Battlestar Galactica (one of my new favorite shows) on Joystiq that rubbed me the wrong way. Here’s a screenshot of the ad:
It has a silly, self-referential title, is written in the vernacular, and in first-person. Basically, it’s designed to look like a blog post, but it’s an ad (and, in fairness, is marked as such). Running an ad that’s supposed to look like real news (or, in the weblog world, a post) is bad form in my book. Shame, because Battlestar Galactica owes so much to genuine word-of-mouth hype.
DSicons.com | Fresh Nintendo DS Icons
DSicons.com | Fresh Nintendo DS Icons
Too lazy to draw your own icon for yourself on your Nintendo DS? Here you go.
11 September 2006
Very good article from Fast Company about CFL light bulbs
Very good article from Fast Company about CFL light bulbs
In an impressive move, Wal-Mart plans to sell 100 million CFL bulbs in the next year.
Kottke's roundup of links about Banksey's Paris Hilton thing
Kottke’s roundup of links about Banksey’s Paris Hilton thing
Artist Banksey replaced thousand of Paris Hilton’s CDs in stores with fake discs.
10 September 2006
Diane Arbus
We’re doing a Stanley Kubrick Netflix marathon over the next week or two. In poking around Wikipedia, I discovered that the creepy apparition of the two girls in The Shining is inspired by a photograph by Diane Arbus, an artist about whom I’d never heard (which isn’t surprising considering my extremely limited knowledge of art history). Compare the image of the girls in The Shining to Arbus’s Identical twins. After doing some quick searching, I’ve found her work to be positively chilling. A few of her more famous shots:
(click to embiggen)
08 September 2006
Sex Baiting Prank on Craigslist Affects Hundreds
Sex Baiting Prank on Craigslist Affects Hundreds
Some guy posted a fake personal ad, then posted all the responses, with photos and email addresses. Waxy looks into what laws might have been broken.
07 September 2006
VG Cats' Spore creatures brought to life - Joystiq
VG Cats’ Spore creatures brought to life - Joystiq
Awesome. VG Cats made a comic about the game Spore. EA re-made the comic using creatures created in the game, then sent the creator figurines of them.
IGN: Top 25 Simpsons Peripheral Characters
IGN: Top 25 Simpsons Peripheral Characters
See also their list of best guest appearances, linked in this article.
06 September 2006
A fundamental way newspaper sites need to change
A fundamental way newspaper sites need to change
Great ideas here. It’d be neat to be able to, say, search a map for my address and see all the news happening near home.
Chris Staros on Lost Girls' Market Performance
Chris Staros on Lost Girls’ Market Performance
The book sold out its first printing immediately, as well as its second printing, and they’ve ordered a third.
04 September 2006
Wizard Magazine's rundown on Lost
Wizard Magazine’s rundown on Lost
What they think we should expect in season three.
IGN's Coverage of the Wii at Leipzig
IGN’s Coverage of the Wii at Leipzig
Annoying loading times, but worth a look. Lots of good shots of some of the big games. The more I see about Red Steel, the less I care, but the other ones look great.
03 September 2006
02 September 2006
01 September 2006
The Sun Online - News: JK has lost the plot
The Sun Online - News: JK has lost the plot
The Sun with an exclusive about a continuity error in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
Brian Wilson | The A.V. Club
Short interview with Brian Wilson on the 40th anniversary release of Pet Sounds. “Quite a sound, huh? The listeners are in for a real treat with the stereo mix, you know? It should be great. And I hope they all enjoy it with their two ears.”
How to make an artificial shark uterus
How to make an artificial shark uterus
If you read one article featuring the term “intra-uterine cannibalism” this week, make it this one.
Four the First Time
A new weblog that’s going through each original issue of the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby Fantastic Four series.
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